Lady Antebellum, Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker take a pause for the cause at 'Stars and Strings'

Eric Ray Davidson

Country trio Lady Antebellum (Dave Haywood, from left, Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley) is one of the headline acts at "Stars and Strings."

Country trio Lady Antebellum (Dave Haywood, from left, Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley) is one of the headline acts at "Stars and Strings." (Eric Ray Davidson)

Dan HymanChicago Tribune

As a Murfreesboro, Tenn.-raised teenager with massive musical ambition, Chris Young was willing to play music for whoever would listen. Sometimes that didn’t make for the most ideal performance venues. “I used to play the patio of a Mexican restaurant for four hours for tips,” the country chart-topping singer recalls with a laugh. The silver lining of such brutal gigs? Young could strip his songs down to their essence. After all, it was just the singer and an acoustic guitar. “You can really let the songs stand out there for themselves that way,” he says.

Young will soon be able to relive his salad days: He and a lineup of top-tier country artists, including Darius Rucker, Brad Paisley, Lady Antebellum and Kelsea Ballerini, touch down in Chicago for Wednesday’s Stars and Strings, an annual acoustic country music concert that showcases country songs at their most raw, intimate and vulnerable. Now in its third year, the CBS Radio-sponsored event donates a percentage of its proceeds to Folds of Honor, a charitable organization that provides educational support to spouses and children of America’s fallen and wounded soldiers.

“I love doing this stuff,” says Rucker, who recently released his fifth country album, “When Was the Last Time.” “You really know what a great song is when you can sit there with a guitar and maybe a mandolin or a fiddle and play it that way and still move people. Then you know you’ve got a great song.”

Lady Antebellum, which typically writes its music with only an acoustic guitar and its three members’ vocals, is particularly drawn to the stripped-back format, says band member Dave Haywood.

“One of our greatest joys is being able to share stories and interact with the crowd and play more casually,” Haywood says. “To be able to return to that format is honestly such a joy.” Haywood says the trio has “been begging our management to let us do a theater tour for like five years now. Being able to be in a room with no set list, go off-the-cuff is just great.”

CBS Radio’s Vice President of Country Programming Tim Roberts says Stars and Strings was principally born out of the country community’s long-held ties with the military. Nashville, he notes, responded in turn: “To be honest we have more artists approaching us than we have room for in one show. We probably could do a week of shows,” he says with a laugh. “There’s so many people that want to get involved.”

Many of the artists participating do in fact have direct ties to the military. For Young, whose sister and brother-in-law are both in the Marine Corps, helping raise money for Folds of Honor “is something that’s very close to my heart.” It’s why says he’s long made a point throughout his career of playing for soldiers stationed abroad in countries such as Iraq and South Korea.

The event is also a chance for the country music community to unite, something Rucker says has never been more essential. In the wake of the deadliest modern mass shooting in the United States at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on Oct.1 that killed 58 and left more than 500 injured, “the importance of this show has gone up exponentially,” Rucker notes. “Let’s show the world how strong we are together.” Adds Young, who toured this summer with Jason Aldean and was therefore present in Las Vegas during the shooting, “It’s a very therapeutic thing to get back onstage. Music is something that can heal.”

As Rucker notes, simply seeing some of the biggest names in country unite for a good cause is a sign that those who lost their lives in Vegas will never be forgotten.

“I can’t wait for that show,” Rucker says of Stars and Strings. “We’re going to be out there playing for all those folks who lost their lives and got injured and playing for the music we all love and the industry we all are a part of.”

Haywood says Stars and Strings, for the artists onstage, is also about enjoying playing music as a community.

“These environments allow for some spontaneity and collaboration,” he says. “I’m sure at some point in time somebody is going to be running out during someone else’s set to sing a harmony or backing vocals or cut up and do some back and forth. That’s what’s fun.

“It’ll feel like a living room backstage,” the Lady Antebellum singer adds, “and hopefully it’ll feel like one onstage as well.”